Al Morris holds the flags from the two holes he registered holes-in-one on while playing in Hawaii in September. PHOTO COURTESY OF AL MORRIS

SANTA ANA – Al Morris went without a hole-in-one for 33 years.

Then he hit his first, a lightning bolt striking on an otherwise sunny Hawaiian day. Three holes later – three entire holes! – with a thunderclap silent and only symbolic, No. 2 dropped.

The matching aces happened for Morris in the span of roughly 33 minutes.

"The second one, I still get goosebumps talking about it," he says. "You wonder, 'How does that happen?' It doesn't. It doesn't happen."

But it did, in September, the absurdly impossible, the mathematically remarkable, the cosmically comical occurring for yet another Orange County golfer.

Two weeks ago, this space featured the unlikely tale of Steve Asay, the Mission Viejo resident with 20 career holes-in-one, including two during the same round in November at Willowick Golf Course.

Today, unlikely gets stretched beyond recognition a second time with the story of Morris, a man who drinks little yet, thanks to a pair of perfect iron shots, accumulated a bar bill approaching $800.

You know the tradition, right? The hole-in-one shooter buys a drink for everyone in the place. Well, buy two drinks for everyone, at the Kapalua Resort on Maui, no less, and here's hoping the 15th club in your bag is a Visa card.

"It's a great story for a party, I can tell you that," Morris, 49, says. "For anybody who plays golf, it's a great party story."

The National Hole-In-One Registry estimates the odds of one player acing two holes in the same round at 67 million to 1. (The odds of winning California's SuperLotto Plus are 41 million to 1.)

And yet, two locals did it barely two months apart. Now that's four of a kind. And aces, too.

"I'm still 18 behind him," Morris says of Asay. "I got the two in one day. But now I have to get 18 more to match him. Twentyhole-in-ones? That seems like forever."

Morris knows forever. It had been forever for him without a hole-in-one, and his forever is longer than most.

See, he isn't just another face in the fairway. Morris is president of Worldwide Golf Shops, which includes all those Roger Dunn stores. If you've never been inside a Roger Dunn, they sell everything a golfer might need. Everything, short of a new swing.

The big boss at Roger Dunn just should have a hole-in-one, you know? At least one. And Morris has played some of the finest courses on the planet, including three rounds at Augusta National and "probably 25" at Pebble Beach.

As a kid, Morris worked at – and subsequently played frequently at – Burbank's DeBell Golf Club, which includes a par-3 course.

"I used to play probably 250 days a year there," he says, "and never made one."

He estimates he has witnessed half a dozen aces. There's a woman in his office with two of them "and she shoots like 120," Morris says. He knows a sales rep with eight holes-in-one. His father-in-law has three.

So Morris dragged all of this with him onto the eighth tee box on Sept. 9 at Kapalua's Plantation Course, the same place where Dustin Johnson just won the PGA Tour season opener.

Morris, using a set of demo clubs borrowed from one of his stores, also had a 7-iron for a shot he gauged to be 181 yards. What he didn't have, though, was total focus. This was the first Sunday of the NFL season and Morris was in a couple fantasy leagues and ...

"I spent the first seven holes checking out the scores and the stats," he says. "The guys I was playing with (buddies Kent Pachl and Perry Ponti) were probably annoyed."

Morris finally paused long enough to hit a high, right-to-left draw, the ball landing just short of the hole and rolling in.

"It was just total relief, finally," he says. "Honest, I was more relieved than anything. I spent the next two holes texting everyone I could think of, calling the house, trying to tell everyone I could. We got the next par-3, No. 11 ... It never, ever crossed my mind."

This time, it was a 9-iron, from 162 yards. Again, high, right-to-left draw. As the ball arched to its peak, Pachl announced, "Here comes No. 2."

The ball landed just short of the pin again and rolled in again.

"It didn't hit me until I pulled the ball out of the hole," explains Morris, who says his index is 5.8. "It was like, 'Are you kidding me? OK, I'm good.' I'm good for the rest of my life, actually."

He ended up shooting an 81, a score Morris calls "embarrassing when you have two 1s on the card."

The next day, Morris and his friends played 27 holes at the Plantation Course, giving him five shots at another hole-in-one. He failed to even hit any of the greens, going 0 for 5.

"Golf returned to normal real quickly," Morris says. "But if I'm not the luckiest guy in the world, I don't know who is. I mean, look at this job. My wife is beautiful. I have three beautiful kids. It's been amazing. That was a freakin' lucky day."

And it was a long time coming, too, 33 years of routine golf eclipsed by 33 minutes of impossible glory.

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